Persons and companies engaged in meat processing, butchering, preparation and handling must take great care to maintain sanitary facilities and equipment. Even minor contaminations can lead to serious public health consequences because of the number of animals and pounds of meat which are produced from a single facility in a single day, whether it is a small, medium or large scale enterprise. The Centers for Disease Control estimated in 2001 that several million Americans are sickened by food borne illness annually, according to a report entitled “Factsheet: Meat Plant Sanitation” by William Benjy Mikel of the University of Kentucky. Product recalls are very expensive, and loss of reputation to brand names can lead to revenue loss and job loss.
For the purposes of this disclosure, the term “sanitize” and its related terms will be used to refer to the process of exposing handling and processing tools, such as knives, shears, clippers, clamps, etc., to water heated to 180° F., per various governmental agencies and industry standards organizations. Sanitization is not to be construed as sterilization, the latter of which generally involves use of chemicals other than water, much greater levels of heat, and tool exposure of much greater periods of time than sanitization. Sanitization is suitable for cleaning a tool, such as a knife, during the work shift, which may be performed if the tool comes in contact with certain unsanitary parts, organs, or glands of an animal being processed. Sterilization is generally performed between shifts, such as overnight.
According to a paper entitled “Basic Elements of Equipment Cleaning and Sanitizing in Food Processing and Handling Operations” by Ronald H. Schmidt, professor at the Food Science and Human Nutrition Department of the University of Florida, Gainesville, cleaning frequency must be clearly defined for each processing stage, step or workstation, and should include the steps of rinsing, cleaning, rinsing, and sanitizing, in that order. The objectives of this level of cleaning are to remove food nutrients that bacteria could use to grow, and to kill any bacteria which are present on a surface or tool. Schmidt differentiates the terms sterilize, disinfect and sanitize as follows: sterilization is a statistical status of destroying and removing all living organisms, disinfection refers to inanimate objects (tools, machines, etc.) and destruction of all vegetative cells, and sanitization refers to reduction of microorganisms to a level considered safe for an intended purpose according to public policy. Schmidt notes that commonly-used hot-water sanitizing using immersion of small parts such as knives can achieve sanitary status of the parts and tools through use of 180° F. water. Lower temperatures of water can be used, if coupled with longer immersion or exposure times, reaching into the range of 15-20 minutes for some types of components.
As such, heating of water to target temperatures, and consumption of that water for sterilization in medium- and large-scale meat processing, handling, preparation and butchering facilities can be a substantial cost of production, and can have substantial environmental impact.